The BBC's successful iPlayer on-demand service will offer a more personalised experience to licence fee payers, in an initiative dubbed My BBC, its director general is due to announce this week.

Tony Hall is expected to say that developing the next generation of the iPlayer, focusing on personalising the choice of BBC programmes offered to users, will be a key ambition for the corporation in his first significant speech since taking over in April.

Speaking on Tuesday at Broadcasting House, Hall will set out his vision for the corporation over the next decade, running up to its centenary in 2022.

In the speech, entitled Where Next?, Hall will address the technological challenges facing the BBC and, in particular, how it needs to adapt to the consumption of digital content on devices other than TVs and radios.

Hall is understood to envisage an enhanced iPlayer being at the centre of this digital relationship with licence-fee payers, allowing them to personalise their viewing and listening choices.

The iPlayer, launched in December 2007, is already hugely popular and increasingly being used on mobile devices . Of 234m requests for BBC TV and radio content in August, 32% came from smartphones and tablets.

Top Gear, The Great British Bake Off, Dragons' Den, The White Queen and EastEnders were among the most requested TV shows on the iPlayer in August, while Test Match Special was the most popular radio programme.

After a difficult year bookended by the Jimmy Savile scandal and the row over executive severance payoffs, Hall is also expected to call for the BBC focus on "what it does best", programming, and in particular news and current affairs, arts, learning and entertainment.

Hall, a former BBC director of news and current affairs who returned to the corporation after more than a decade running the Royal Opera House, will announce plans to put a wide range of cultural programming back at the heart of its output. There will be a 20% rise in investment and a new brand for arts content across radio, the internet and television. A new set of BBC partnerships with national arts institutions such as Tate, the British Museum, the National Theatre and Manchester international festival is also promised, along with relaunching The Space, the BBC's experimental digital arts service developed in partnership with Arts Council England.

Simplicity will be a key theme in Hall's speech and he will talk about how the BBC can become a better-run organisation by cutting bureaucracy and layers of management.

BBC insiders suggested that in the wake of the Digital Media Initiative debacle – an IT project that wasted nearly £100m of licence-fee money before being scrapped – and to simplify management reporting lines, the technology division could be restructured and more control over digital output handed back to programme-makers.

Corporation staff, facing further job losses and budget cuts under the Delivering Quality First cost savings programme, will be looking for a rallying call after a tough year.

One insider said staff were "feeling rather leaderless ... every time [BBC Trust chairman] Lord Patten speaks he moans about their pay". A BBC producer added that Hall's "honeymoon is over", after a period where he has largely been sorting out problems inherited from predecessors.

Although Hall's speech will focus on mapping out a successful path to the BBC's centenary in 2022, it will be seen as an opening salvo in the campaign to renew the corporation's 10-year royal charter and licence fee funding agreements with the government, which expire at the end of 2016.